A final set of questions addressed
problems of method and concept. How can we know as researchers, or how
should we deal with knowledge about movements, transport routes and communications
in the history of West Central Africa? The Symposium clearly provided
a fruitful encounter between a variety of different disciplines and academic
cultures, all rooted in their diverse methodologies, sources and conceptual
debates. It was all the more vital during the Symposium, therefore, that
as a result of the presentations and discussions individual participants
repeatedly reflected on their own approach and potential common ground
with others, in accordance with the new questions on the possibility of
academic knowledge that have surfaced in recent years.

The contributions by Wyatt
MacGaffey in the opening session and by Joseph C. Miller,
prior to the conclusion of the Symposium addressed some of these questions
quite explicitly. In his presentation "Crossing the River: Myth and
Movement in Central Africa," the anthropologist Wyatt MacGaffey
questioned the myths that underlie scholarly histories. He cited as an
example the story of alleged Hamitic civilizers in Africa, which was formerly
taken seriously as history. Even today, too much credence is given to
the idea that societies can be usefully characterized as matrilineal or
patrilineal, and too many historians take at face value indigenous myths
asserting that kingdoms were founded by civilizing immigrants. Taking
accounts of the origin of the Kongo kingdom as an example, often deemed
as evidence for actual migrations, MacGaffey suggested another way of
reading them. A myth is "surely a product of its time and place.
If we drop the assumption that the historical Kingdom of Kongo, with its
capital Mbanza Kongo, is the necessary point of reference; cease to read
the migration stories as a kind of bungled history of events; and situate
them in the places from which they are reported, a different sense of
their import emerges." These stories , among other things, typically
"describe transitions, often across a river, leading to the settlement
of a new country". "The stories", MacGaffey continued,
were by intention "not historical but sociological, sketching an
ideally ordered society. ... In that sense, the land across the river
provides a space in which to inscribe social theory." It can be concluded
that West Central Africa is a particularly conspicuous example that myths
of origin have to be seen as a repository of arguments in the political
process. As such, they have to be taken seriously, even as a source for
historians, but not in the conventional sense of factual memory and often
for a much later era than the one they speak about.

In the discussion that followed,
it was wondered why "dragons" in academic thought, such as the above-mentioned
positivist understanding of migration myths, are apparently only recognized
(and duly slaughtered) by subsequent generations and not in the period
in which they arise. If, however, it is true that the construction of
certain "myths" in research depends on their particular cultural context,
then the same must be true for their critique. In more practical terms,
it was asked whether a constructionist approach to myth, which is now
finding considerable echo in western academic circles, might not be equally
appealing for students and teachers in Africa itself, for whom certain
oral traditions, for instance, have become essential elements of their
view of history. Another concern was that too much insistence on the critique
of myth in Africa might perpetuate the stereotype that "African history
is all myth".

Quite different from the anthropological
theory in the contribution just mentioned, Jean-Luc Vellut makes
a foray into ethnographic museums as another production site of "myths"
in MacGaffey's sense, a site that has been highly influential in shaping
our understanding of place, movement and communication in the Central
African past. In his introduction of new exhibition projects at the Belgian
Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale in Tervuren, with which he stimulated
discussions at the Central African Collections in the Berlin Ethnological
Museum, several possible methods of overcoming the strongly regionalizing
tendencies that used to dominate the presentation of the Musée
Royal emerged. One of them, exemplified by a planned exhibition on "Congo:
le temps colonial", is a new emphasis on the (often unequal) connections,
mutual influences and perceptions between the colonial economies and religions
in Central Africa, building on the earlier migrations, long-distance trade,
and integration of the "ancient empires" into the emerging global system.
The purpose of this is to overcome the former binary distinction between
former colonial territories and areas. Another way of deconstructing former
mythologies produced by the museum is their historicization. An "exhibition
of the exhibition" is planned in Tervuren, i.e., a display of how the
collections were presented during the colonial period. This reflective
approach to the myths of the past resembles the one proposed for academic
theorizing by MacGaffey (above).

The search for a consensus
among the contributors regarding some general conceptual issues, even
beyond the individual case of Angola, was stimulated by Joseph C.
Miller in his wide-sweeping and invigorating presentation that opened
the concluding session. Speaking about "Communication and Commercialization
in Central Africa: Angola in the Context of World-Historical Processes
of Modernity", he proposed a broad sequence of historical steps through
which Europeans and Africans effectively consolidated their networks of
transport and communication in (Central) Africa. He first of all insisted
that this process should be approached as part of world history. He described
the trade and communication networks that developed in this part of Africa
as materializations of global historical processes of commercialization.
Secondly, however, he argued that this process, as any facet of history
of the one world, needs to be explored through the multi-centric history
of many different, but complementary local or regional worlds, using their
distinct but interacting parameters and epistemologies. The world history
of transport routes and communication occurred as a result of a multitude
of attempts to seize fresh opportunities for local advantage. This pluralist
perspective would also help to move history as an academic discipline
beyond its Eurocentric origins and overcome established "dichotomic myths".
Thirdly and finally, Miller described the history of transport routes
and communication as a history of attempts by Africans (and to some degree
Europeans) to come to terms with strange, unsettling and accelerating
changes, as well as new forms of communication with unknown "others".
A central theme in this history, according to Miller, is how these attempts
to conceptualize mobility and change drew on the inherited cultural knowledge
of the region, and continue to do so.
The concluding discussion of the Symposium, finally, was introduced by
some general comments from Wyatt MacGaffey and Maria da Conceição
Neto.

Wyatt MacGaffey recommended
abandoning all one-dimensional interpretation of narratives about African
history. The long history of movement, transport, and communication in
Central Africa that was stressed during the Symposium, he argued, makes
notions of the boundedness of spatial or socio-political entities appear
as myth. But these notions are at the same time real and correspond to
a need for identity that only grows stronger with mobility from one place
to another. The same applies to communication between languages and disciplines,
as undertaken abundantly during the Symposium. "We misunderstand what
Africans want to tell us if we do not think in alternatives" was his more
general conclusion.

Maria da Conceição
Neto, in turn, pointed out the importance of the conference for the
historiography of Angola. In her concluding remarks, she was enthusiastic
about the opportunities offered by the Symposium: its face-to-face character
that enabled full participation in the discussions; the growing interest
in the region manifested by the number and multiple origins of the scholars
present at the Symposium; the inclusion of young generations of scholars
from three continents, attracted by the rich sources Angola can offer
on West Central African history; and the presence of the older generation,
"the pioneers" of historiography of the region. She also referred to the
theme of the Symposium as "a very good choice. None of us will write anymore
without thinking about space und communication".